Whatever else 2016 threw at us, in this household we shall remember it as the year when we welcomed three new grandchildren: Cleo Donfrancesco, Leo Voce and River Linforth.

We saw them all over Christmas, together with their siblings and cousins, and the seven of them, and their parents, gave us great joy and innumerable reasons to look forward rather than back.

Don’t Look Back is good advice on this first day of the new post-truth year, as Jill prepares to fly to Ireland to celebrate the all-too-short life of the life-enhancing Susie Shepherd; whose death was for us the final throe of what has been a wretched year in so many respects.

There is enough out there (some of it from my pen) about Brexit and Trump and Syria and the rise of the right and the terrible and continuing (another in Istanbul last night) attacks on us all.

Although in the wee small hours I do, I am not going to dwell on them in this post; rather, I am resolved to look for - and forward to - a year which will bring us some measure of catharsis.

I am looking forward to taking down the Christmas tree and its associated baubles tomorrow.

I am looking forward to reading new books, to drinking some new wines and listening to new music.

I am looking forward to completing a novel, one chapter of which I have been grappling with for some years.

I am looking forward to helping overcome hatred and bigotry.

And I am looking forward to a new baseball season and finding out if it is true that it’s all about the pitching. Because if it is so, then the Sox might just take another Series.

But most of all, I am looking forward to spending another year with the grandchildren.

These are small things, perhaps, in the great disorder of things. But they will help (me at least) to purge the emotions evoked by the desperate state of our world: a catharsis of sorts.

Yes, I believe in history. But history to the defeated may say alas, but cannot help or pardon.

It’s probably getting there, but so long as the kids are well and happy and healthy, it’s not dark yet.

Happy New Year.

New year's day from the everysmith vaults: Of all the musical greats we lost last year, I shall miss Paul Kantner the most. So it's a Kantner playlist I am listening to right now. But Jill tells me a great deal of music was made post-1977, so I will be searching for the sound of this also.

How come someone called Smith has grandchildren with such wonderfully exotic names?

Reply

Allen

2/1/2017 07:46:03 am

There's no doubt that 2016 was pretty awful on a macro level, but life goes on. As Chomsky, Sanders and Corbyn are saying, fight each individual attack from the right. And as you say, relish the small private pleasures. Happy New Year.

Reply

Craig

2/1/2017 07:05:29 pm

Nice piece Max

Reply

Marg Roberts

11/1/2017 08:07:38 pm

I like New Year because you can start afresh. I hope yours is a happy one.